{"id":2759,"date":"2019-12-09T15:47:02","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T15:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2759"},"modified":"2019-12-09T15:47:02","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T15:47:02","slug":"romantic-reimaginings-auden-macneice-yeats-and-shelleys-west-wind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2759","title":{"rendered":"Romantic Reimaginings: Auden, MacNeice, Yeats, and Shelley\u2019s West Wind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Romantic Reimaginings is a BARS blog series which seeks to explore the ways in which texts of the Romantic era continue to resonate. The blog is curated by Eleanor Bryan. If you would like to publish an article in the series, please email ebryan@lincoln.ac.uk.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today on the blog, Amanda Blake Davis discusses Auden, MacNeice, Yeats, and Shelley’s West Wind.
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B. Shelley, fair copy of Ode to the West Wind Shelfmark: MS. Shelley adds. e. 12 (pp. 62-63) Credit: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (via Shelley\u2019s Ghost <http:\/\/shelleysghost.bodleian.ox.ac.uk\/fair-copy-of-ode-to-the-west-wind>)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018Like Yeats\u2019s poetry\u2019, Edna Longley writes, \u2018MacNeice\u2019s descends from the non-Wordsworthian branch of Romanticism\u2019,[1]<\/sup><\/a> and one of MacNeice\u2019s greatest Romantic influences is Shelley, who is invariably filtered through Yeats. \u00a0Following Yeats, for whom Prometheus Unbound<\/em> was \u2018a sacred book\u2019,[2]<\/sup><\/a> MacNeice exalts Prometheus Unbound<\/em> as \u2018one of my sacred books\u2019 and recounts how he \u2018swilled the rhythms of Shelley, the sweet champagne of his wishful thinking and schoolboy anger, his Utopias of amethyst and starlight\u2019.[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 \u2018What we wanted was \u201crealism\u201d\u2019, MacNeice writes of the \u2018Auden Group\u2019, \u2018but\u2014so the paradox goes on\u2014we wanted it for romantic reasons\u2019.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 MacNeice publicly disavows Shelley in his study of Yeats through his tracking of the older poet\u2019s own building and scattering of a pseudo-Shelleyan system of symbols,[5]<\/a> and Harold Bloom, criticising MacNeice\u2019s \u2018prejudices\u2019 against Yeats\u2019s indebtedness to Romantic tradition, claims that \u2018[t]o MacNeice, Romanticism is a poetic disease of which Yeats cured himself\u2019.[6]<\/a>\u00a0 But Bloom overlooks the Shelleyan west wind that blows through MacNeice\u2019s poetry, as it does in Yeats\u2019s.\u00a0 If Romanticism is indeed a \u2018poetic disease\u2019, it is one that enlivens the modern poets\u2019 verse with fevered energy. \u00a0\u2018Shelley\u2019s restless west wind blows through Autumn Journal<\/em>\u2019, Madeleine Callaghan writes, \u2018allowing MacNeice to alter and renew Romantic preoccupations, and imbue them with a distinctly modern sensibility\u2019.[7]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Shelley\u2019s west wind, at once \u2018Destroyer and Preserver\u2019, sings through MacNeice and Yeats\u2019s poetry as an \u2018unseen presence\u2019 that drives and energises the modern poets\u2019 verse (Shelley, Ode to the West Wind<\/em>, 14 and 2).[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

Yeats locates Shelley\u2019s artistry in \u2018words written upon leaves\u2019,[9]<\/sup><\/a> harnessing Shelley\u2019s west wind and its revitalisation of poetic utterance.<\/p>\n

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe<\/p>\n

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!<\/p>\n

And, by the incantation of this verse,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth<\/p>\n

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!<\/p>\n

(Shelley, Ode to the West Wind<\/em>, 63-67)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeats\u2019s \u2018poetic breathings are sustained by his lifelong engagement with Shelley\u2019s poetry\u2019, Michael O\u2019Neill writes, noting how \u2018Yeats tempers subjectivity with symbolism in poems such as \u201cThe Secret Rose\u201d, which ends with an image deeply suffused with Shelleyan inflections\u2019.[10]<\/a>\u00a0 In \u2018The Secret Rose\u2019, Yeats awaits<\/p>\n

The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.<\/p>\n

When shall the stars be blown about the sky,<\/p>\n

Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?<\/p>\n

Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,<\/p>\n

Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?<\/p>\n

(Yeats, \u2018The Secret Rose\u2019, 28-32)[11]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Harold Bloom confirms that \u2018Yeats\u2019s wind among the reeds has both Irish mythological and occult sources, as usual, but its main source is in Shelley\u2019s winds of destruction-creation, which blow through all of his poetry\u2019.[12]<\/a>\u00a0 The searching doubt of Yeats\u2019s questions in \u2018The Secret Rose\u2019 gestures away from a resolutely Shelleyan hope, and O\u2019Neill notes that \u2018whereas Shelley\u2019s sparks will rekindle hope in the minds of his readers, Yeats\u2019s sparks will be extinguished (he half-hopes, half-fears) as \u201cthy great wind blows\u201d\u2019.[13]<\/a>\u00a0 Yeats \u2018does not return to the Romantics for a system of belief\u2019, O\u2019Neill stresses, \u2018[b]ut he draws on their practice for hints about how to dramatize conflict\u2019, identifying in his poetry \u2018a counter-current of feeling, a reluctance fully to unleash the forces of millennial destruction\u2019.[14]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Self-reflectively, Yeats writes of Shelley, \u2018I found that he and not Blake, whom I had studied more and with more approval, had shaped my life\u2019.[15]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Months before his death, Yeats made a pilgrimage to Shelley\u2019s birthplace, Field Place, in an apparent act of reconciliation and respect for the Romantic poet\u2019s lasting influence, finding \u2018A beautiful old house, one part Tudor, kept in perfect order and full of fine pictures (two Wilsons).\u00a0 We also went to the church where the Shelley tombs are, a great old church defiled by 1870 or thereabouts, stained glass, and pavements not at all as Shelley saw it\u2019.\u00a0 \u2018Before I leave\u2019, Yeats wrote, \u2018I shall visit the pond (not that near the house) where Shelley sailed paper boats\u2019.[16]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Shelley\u2019s influence, like the breathings of his west wind, circulates through Yeats\u2019s works and thoughts, extending its energies to later post-Romantics like Auden and MacNeice.<\/p>\n

The \u2018dirge \/ Of the dying year\u2019 sung by Shelley\u2019s west wind appears in MacNeice\u2019s Autumn Journal<\/em> as a woodpigeon \u2018calls and stops but the wind continues \/ Playing its dirge in the trees, playing its tricks\u2019 (Ode to the West Wind<\/em>, 23-24; Autumn Journal<\/em>, p. 111).[17]<\/a>\u00a0 Like Yeats\u2019s harnessing of Shelley\u2019s \u2018great wind\u2019, MacNeice\u2019s woodpigeon voices a poetic influence that is changed but sustained. \u00a0MacNeice\u2019s lyrical reportage in Autumn Journal<\/em> chimes with Auden\u2019s concession that<\/p>\n

poetry makes nothing happen: it survives<\/p>\n

In the valley of its saying where executives<\/p>\n

Would never want to tamper; it flows south<\/p>\n

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,<\/p>\n

Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,<\/p>\n

A way of happening, a mouth.<\/p>\n

(Auden, \u2018In Memory of W. B. Yeats\u2019, 36-41)[18]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Auden ensures Yeats\u2019s survival through his poetry, and in doing so he viscerally mouths Shelley\u2019s west wind in Yeats\u2019s dying transmutation, his words-as-ashes \u2018scattered among a hundred cities\u2019.\u00a0 As Shelley scatters his \u2018words among mankind\u2019, so Auden\u2019s verse ensures that \u2018The words of a dead man \/ Are modified in the guts of the living\u2019 (\u2018In Memory of W. B. Yeats\u2019, 18 and 22-23).\u00a0 In shifting from journalistic to poetic posture, the inward-looking MacNeice also mouths \u2018The words of a dead man\u2019 in the sound of \u2018Shelley and jazz and lieder and love and hymn-tunes\u2019 (Autumn Journal<\/em>, p. 135).\u00a0 Shelley\u2019s influence plays on through the modern poets\u2019 verse, sustained by the inextinguishable energies of his west wind.<\/p>\n

Amanda Blake Davis is a PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield and a Postgraduate Representative for BARS.\u00a0 Her thesis analyses P. B. Shelley\u2019s uses of androgyny alongside his readings and translations of Plato.\u00a0 Amanda\u2019s wider research interests include influence and imitation in Romantic and post-Romantic poetry.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Twitter: @ABDavis1816<\/strong><\/p>\n

Works Cited:
\n<\/span>[1]<\/a> Edna Longley, Louis MacNeice: A Critical Study<\/em> (London: Faber and Faber, 1988), p. xii.
\n[2]<\/a> W. B. Yeats, \u2018The Philosophy of Shelley\u2019s Poetry\u2019 in Essays and Introductions<\/em> (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1961), p. 65.
\n[3]<\/a> Louis MacNeice, The Strings are False: An Unfinished Autobiography<\/em>, ed. by E. R. Dodds (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), p. 98.
\n[4]<\/a> Louis MacNeice, Selected Literary Criticism<\/em>, ed. by Alan Heuser (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 149.
\n[5]<\/a> Louis MacNeice, The Poetry of W. B. Yeats<\/em> (London: Faber and Faber, 1967), p. 44.
\n[6]<\/a> Harold Bloom, Yeats<\/em> (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 108.
\n[7]<\/a> Madeleine Callaghan, \u2018Louis MacNeice and the Struggle for Romantic Identity\u2019 in Legacies of Romanticism: Literature, Culture, Aesthetics<\/em>, ed. by Carmen Casaliggi and Paul March-Russell (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), p. 161.
\n[8]<\/a> Ode to the West Wind<\/em> is quoted from Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Major Works<\/em>, ed. by Zachary Leader and Michael O\u2019Neill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 412-414.
\n[9]<\/a> Yeats, \u2018The Philosophy of Shelley\u2019s Poetry\u2019, p. 75.
\n[10]<\/a> Michael O\u2019Neill, The All-Sustaining Air: Romantic Legacies and Renewals in British, American, and Irish Poetry since 1900<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 20 and 54.
\n[11]<\/a> \u2018The Secret Rose\u2019 is quoted from W. B. Yeats, The Major Works<\/em>, ed. by Edward Larrissy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 33-34.
\n[12]<\/a> Bloom, Yeats<\/em>, p. 124.
\n[13]<\/a> O\u2019Neill, The All-Sustaining Air<\/em>, p. 54
\n[14]<\/a> O\u2019Neill, The All-Sustaining Air<\/em>, pp. 58 and 54.
\n[15]<\/a> W. B. Yeats, \u2018Prometheus Unbound<\/em>\u2019 in Essays and Introductions<\/em> (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1961), p. 424.
\n[16]<\/a> W. B. Yeats, Letters on Poetry from W. B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley<\/em> (London, New York, NY, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1940), p. 200.
\n[17]<\/a> Autumn Journal<\/em> is quoted from Louis MacNeice, Collected Poems<\/em>, ed. by Peter McDonald (London: Faber and Faber, 2016), pp. 99-164.
\n[18]<\/a> \u2018In Memory of W. B. Yeats\u2019 is quoted from W. H. Auden, Selected Poems<\/em>, ed. by Edward Mendelson (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1979), pp. 80-83.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Romantic Reimaginings is a BARS blog series which seeks to explore the ways in which texts of the Romantic era continue to resonate. The blog is curated by Eleanor Bryan…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2759"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2763,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759\/revisions\/2763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}